Social Media Marketing For Dummies, 2nd Edition

Distinguishing Between SMM Voices and Brand Voices

At this point, you’re probably thinking that your SMM voice is similar to your brand voice or personality. You’re probably already thinking of people — maybe representatives from public relations or corporate marketing in your organization — who can be your SMM voice. Before you jump into this decision too quickly, check out Table 5-1, which compares brand and SMM voices. Use this table to explain to team members why the two voices are different and why this effort may not be best relegated to the public relations department.

A SMM voice is very different from a brand voice. Someone who’s spent a lifetime representing your brand and keeping everyone else around on brand message is probably not the best person to be the SMM voice.

Table 5-1 Brand versus SMM Voice

Brand Voice	SMM Voice
Singular, anonymous company voice	Multiple, authentic individual voices
Reflects the brand personality and attributes perfectly	Transparent, easy to identify online, and only loosely on brand
Everybody follows the brand voice strictly	Engaging, conversational, and responsive
Designed to appear across all brand touch-points	Mostly relevant only where the conversations are
Usually unique to the company	Usually unique to the person
Sometimes manifested in a person but not always	Always manifested in a real person ...